Published on Friday, April 27, 2012 by Dissent
ALEC Retreats, the Right Wing Freaks
by Mark Engler

Customers should be able to know if companies that they are supporting with their purchases are busy spending money on groups that undermine environmental regulations, attack workers’ rights, promote “Stand Your Ground” gun laws, advance discriminatory “Voter ID” laws, and otherwise bolster the right-wing legislative vanguard. And if these consumers don’t like this behavior, they should be at liberty to take their business elsewhere.

That proposition seems to fall pretty safely within a free market, vote-with-your-dollars paradigm. In fact, watchdogs who are providing consumers with full information about misbehaving corporations should be seen—again, within a free-market framework—as providing a valuable service, since informed consumers are supposed to be an important part of efficiently functioning capitalism.

But no. If you ask right-wing talking heads, campaigners who dare to suggest that consumers express displeasure with corporations are waging a war on “open thinking and discussion of legislation.”

... The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) recently reported on ALEC Director of External Relations Caitlyn Korb appealing to a Heritage Foundation “Bloggers Briefing.” According to the CMD, Korb begged

conservative bloggers for help while prepping “a very aggressive campaign to really spread the word about what we actually do.”

(italics in original; bold emphasis added)

... well, er, no, ALEC, it's not what you actually do that you want out there in the clean sunshine - that, in fact, is exactly what you are objecting to, since in daylight your misdirection, your magic "look here not there" tactics are shown up for exactly what they are and the blood dripping from your vampire fangs is plain for all to see.

I refuse to compare these ghouls even with the repulsive things that crawl out from under rocks - every living thing on this earth has its place and its use (excepting perhaps us - we're the aberration of which ALEC is the penultimate exemplar ) every yucky slime mold, parasite, slug, creepy-crawly thing excepting your sort, which are nothing but giant ravening maws trying to eat the world, giving nothing, loving nothing, spewing useless filth. Fly back into whatever hell you swarmed out of, you foulness.